Pritzker confirmed for Commerce

The Senate on Tuesday easily confirmed Penny Pritzker as Commerce secretary, after early speculation that her nomination could cause trouble for the White House.

The vote was 97-1.

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Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders was the only senator to vote against the nomination.

Pritzker, the Hyatt Hotel heiress, was the national finance chairwoman of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and the national co-chairwoman of his reelection campaign. She was criticized for having benefited from offshore tax havens and investing in financial instruments that helped precipitate the 2008 financial meltdown, and understated her income by at least $80 million on required financial disclosure forms.

But Republicans were generally uninterested in criticizing her wealth and business background, and unions that opposed the nomination didn’t fight the White House. UNITE HERE, a 270,000-member union of hotel and restaurant workers, has clashed with the Hyatt chain in the past over working conditions and contracts had opposed the nomination.

Pritzker had a strong performance at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last month, where questions ranged from issues from cybersecurity to the National Weather Service to creating manufacturing jobs to fisheries, with very few queries related to Pritzker’s family.

Obama has previously suggested revamping the department and moving agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service elsewhere. But that plan, including the creation of a “Secretary of Business,” would have to be approved by Congress and went nowhere.

The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater,” Obama joked at his 2011 State of the Union address. “I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.”